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Tuesday, 20 August 2013

God in Exile

"A man was going down..."
Luke 10:30

Reading
Lk 10:30-34

An effective revelation of the divine occurs during an exile of an individual who was estranged from his family, homeland and everything he belonged to. An apocalypse is brought into effect in that individual in order to experience the revelation of El-Shaddai (Gen 12:1; 15:7; 17:1). Only in the experience of a proper exile and estrangement does God appears in his own estrangement, that is revelation, where the infinite totality steps into its otherness of finite totality. That is in the self-naming and self-revelation of God in El-Shaddai named in the experience of estrangement and exile.

This self-estrangement and exile brought into this world the complete revelation of the I AM of the self-revealed God into history. This total self-estrangement of God in exile we call as Jesus Christ (Phil 2:5-11). A complete emptying of the transcendence which is the abode of God was abandoned to take its place on the earth which is God's place of exile and estrangement (Hegel, Altizer). Only in this exile and estrangement does God becomes flesh (John 1:14) and new totality and revelation which is actual and present.

Now to the reading of Luke 10:30-34 the story of a Jew traveling towards Jericho was wounded by bandits abandonment by Priest and Levite was finally rescued by a Samaritan, who was a stranger and one who was sent into exile by the Jews. Samaritan who features in the parable is usually named as Jesus the 'good Samaritan.' A re-reading will question the very popular naming of Jesus as 'good Samaritan' because culturally Jesus cannot identify himself as Samaritan because he is a Jew. The very parable itself is a reversal, where in a Jew is abandoned by Jews in to the other who is in exile, and that Jew in his exile in order to find the other in true revelation of himself.

This parable when read through the experience of exile and estrangement talks about Jesus who in exile from the transcendence finds himself in the hands of the estranged other humanity that can be named as the Samaritans of God, find God in the state of brokenness, where the very act of healing is the healing of humans themselves. This parable is an revelation of God in brokenness and exile in a complete revelation of God as stranger of the other and the reconciliation of the other experiences the healing of humanity which is the Great Humanity Divine (Blake).

Therefore the very condition of exile and estrangement which is experienced in today's reality is the assurance of the total presence of God in the other, where when we try to heal the brokenness of humanity we actually restore the great humanity divine.